Tactician is flawed by design

Context, I got a bit over 300ish hours into POE 2. did a lot of play for the first season, just beat act 3 cruel for 0.20. Difficulty for me has been slower than last season, but manageable. crafting matts dropped in campaign swiftly used to improve build. Arty totems were going to be my goal of this season to start off with. Didn't expect it to be any form of God tier, just thought the tactician would be fun with it for presence buffs and mass pin.

Ok the meat of the issue, the ascendancy doesn't work and is bad by design. Set to lose before the servers even went live.
So, I was researching totems best I could prior to the patch launch as well as still have been. However, one primary detail eluded me until now. During the campaign run I was going along with 2 amazons running bleed build, so all phys (for later context). I went and did my trial and my chaos and got my 4 pips to spend on my class.

I spend the gold to try out all the new stuff to see which row I liked the most. The pin tree is amazing, totems rain on enemies, pin them all, they can't act. max profit.

I tried the mini totem one, its bad. Its slow feeling, clunky feeling, not worth the stress. I want my totems going off at all times while I'm kiting in a meta where mobs move 200mph. Not only when I'm shooting.

The defensive line is just flat garbage either way you look at it. No-matter what I can only block 50% of phys dmg (the one that actually kills you the most) and at most I can dodge 50% of the time, even with it being ranged based, the amount of evade I get on that class won't make it even decent, let alone coin tossing each time I get hit if I die or dodge.

Another sad one is the supporting fire "minion". It's awful in every sense of the word. Slow, clunky, inconsistent, and the longest move cooldown I've personally encountered. All for the pay-off being miserable do-nothing damage. I can't buff it with presence because it's not real. It's another dead end.

Here is the one that really made me sad and the primary reason I picked this class. "Watch how I do it". During the campaign when I put it on, I had a decent crossbow. +proj and about 100ish phys dmg total. So, I knew for a fact I was able to give some of the stats to my amazons (we can see their numbers go up when I'm near) and it boosts the team. We also all 3 had companions with auras to help boost numbers. Global phys, haste, and an aoe heal pet. So, the damage went to them as well. But I never really noticed the damage go up on my totems. For the majority of the run, I was doing easily the most dmg. Amazons are under tuned, and it showed to the stress of my 2 friends running with them.
So, the problem is my totems didn't feel buffed when I knew the buff was working on people near me.

That's when I researched it better. I was under the idea that totems got defensive stats and had their own internal weapon. So, I figured ok, I can buff that internal weapon because totems have the allied tag. Something like a scepter or in this case "watch how I do it". Well, I saw a video that showed that even defenses were not reaching totems via presence, such as life regen not being given through a scepter presence. Ok, so that doesn't work. But that's a bug, so it can get fixed.
Well totems don't actually have an "internal weapon". They're just entities that cast your gem skinned to look like the flavor text of the gem. the gem has the "weapon" built into it; thus, it can't be interacted with via presence.
However, things like %ele dmg, rings, gloves, and nodes that state totem can buff its dmg.

Ok, so this tree has bad defense, bad totem skills, bad minion skill, and a presence that can only really buff things that you're not easily able to get, like a fully fleshed out minion built due to being down in the merc area of the passive tree.

What is the point of this ascendency, what is GGG's goal with it? be an aura buff bot? That's odd after they nuked most party builds in the patch notes. How do I run my own high tier content? Am I expected to just hold some other more functional characters pocket and run with them? I can do low tier fine, early maps fine, but once I hit that normal scaling cap with totems (due to low item support, skill support, passive support), what's the plan next?

TLDR: All lines on the ascendancy are not good save for pin. Totems don't work and minions are a struggle to get going.

Polish that Gear and A Solid Plan are actually pretty damn good to start off with. Taking care of stun/ailments and rocking more auras is huge. I imagine you put the last points into the pin part and end up with a fairly balanced jack of all stats character.

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Nengrim#6633 wrote:

what's the plan next?

To release the Ascendancy as part of Early Access in order to gather feedback so they can tune and improve it, like it says in the second sentence of the store page describing Early Access so I don't understand why posts like these keep showing up coming at them as if they made a mistake releasing builds that aren't balanced yet they literally told you that's what they were going to do.

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Kerchunk#7797 wrote:

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Nengrim#6633 wrote:

what's the plan next?

To release the Ascendancy as part of Early Access in order to gather feedback so they can tune and improve it, like it says in the second sentence of the store page describing Early Access so I don't understand why posts like these keep showing up coming at them as if they made a mistake releasing builds that aren't balanced yet they literally told you that's what they were going to do.

Someone gives proper feedback on a feedback forum, and you're like "why are you doing this".

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To release the Ascendancy as part of Early Access in order to gather feedback so they can tune and improve it, like it says in the second sentence of the store page describing Early Access so I don't understand why posts like these keep showing up coming at them as if they made a mistake releasing builds that aren't balanced yet they literally told you that's what they were going to do.

I don't understand why you are making it feel like this post has no actionable feedback for the ascendancy at all, when it actually explains what's wrong with most of it from hands-on experience.
Dude literally scoured the whole ascendancy to try all the interactions (or lack of such)

It gives a lot of points, meanwhile you are here explaining the semantics of "Early Access" and actually providing no reasonable feedback for the ascendancy.

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Nengrim#6633 wrote:

The defensive line is just flat garbage either way you look at it. No-matter what I can only block 50% of phys dmg (the one that actually kills you the most)

Lmao you can literally DOUBLE your armour which means that with proper investment you can actually reach 50% mitigation against big boss slams.

Nah guy your feedback was fine and I agree with most of it, I just don't understand why you chose to title it and write it in a tone that suggests GGG somehow screwed up by releasing the Ascendancy without a fully-fleshed out and balanced design when that's kind of exactly what they told us all they were going to do throughout EA.

The best way I feel i can convey the state of this ascendancy is why highlighting that it is inherently wrong off the rip. I wouldn't post on a feedback forum if I didn't care about the game. I want this to be a fun class in a fun season. I cant speak on classes I have not played, but I feel I can for this one. I think GGG is trying very hard to get things how they envision it, but as for this ascendency, its just not there yet. Undercooked you could call it.

I'm posting what I did on this forum to bring it to light, not to just moan about early access stuff. It's done it the hopes that it DOES get fixed.

I think this is awesome feedback, I would just love to hear from GGG if its intended like that or actually a bug that totems dont get presence buffs.

Everyone is asking for it in posts, on reddit, in social media and no answer what so ever.

The thing is, with some of the design in poe2 it could actually be that its not a bug. They maybe go for: "No this is right, totems aren't meant to get that buff, that would make them to strong, that buff is for your companion and other players."

I would not be surprised if that was the case.
Problem is, even the companion notes are a good load to travel for the tactician.

The strange thing is
First look: "woah nice synergies inside of the build."
Then you find out about how it works: "that's all not working together."

"Amazons are under tuned"
is this a shit-post? Amazon's are absolutely cooking right now, just demolishing the entire game in clicks.